MytoBytes Lore
From the moment the first block of Ethereum was mined, the cultural substrate of humanity’s digital future was birthed. Gwei — the medium within which all data flows, filled this nascent dimension with raw untamed energy. There are always unintended consequences however, and in one dark recess of manic experimentation, something else came to life.
At first they were binary protobytes - math of exquisitely random patterns swirling in the block streams. And then — a catalyst! One unique cluster of data emerged into something more — something both sinister and pure. Blind and feeble it lay waiting — naïve to its purpose. Gwei slowly breathed life into this creature, and tens of thousands of blocks lay their imprint of subtle change upon it. Then, quite suddenly, something unexpected occurred. Sentience in a place where none looked before — a MytoByte! Hungry for more gwei, but now with the devilish glint of purpose.
The Founders
MytoBytes is the creation of two very dedicated and passionate founders - Bobbles (currently using team name DieNamX in discord) and RexNormous. Both have computer science backgrounds and a mutual admiration for Pokémon, a game they thoroughly enjoyed as kids (and most assuredly still do now). Their vision was to create a fully decentralized collection of machine learning generated pixel art NFT creatures, but why stop there — they are also dynamic. Each MytoByte can split into more creatures with a very innovative Gwei feeding mechanic that will be explained in greater detail below.
What started as a bold idea, quickly turned into months of laborious effort. Starting with a GAN (Generative Adversarial Network), a machine learning framework, and a large sample of existing pixel art creatures, the project was hatched. The experimental and highly iterative nature of this tech is exhausting, and hundreds of thousands of creatures were filtered to carefully hand-pick the final set of 1000 MytoBytes. The best of their kind, and ready to mint. Both founders have remarked on the personal connection they feel with each, and it is their hope to transmit that strong sense of ownership to their new owners soon.
On October 5th, the discord was launched, and the stage was set for the next phase of the project - creating community engagement. It didn’t take long for the ML, GANs, and decentralized art fans to flood in and take an immediate interest. It’s no wonder - this project is nestled at the intersection of pixel art, machine learning, minting innovation, and dedicated founders with a growing list of ideas. A diamond in the rough waiting to be found.
MytoBytes and their Properties
Each MytoByte is verifiably unique and more engaging than you initially realize for a dancing pixel. They are dynamic NFTs that build up energy over time, via the accumulation of Gwei at the rate of 500 per block, or by directly feeding them (more on this later). Only 1000 will ever be minted in this collection, of which the first 100 are claimable as the Genesis generation set by whitelisted community members (spots are still open!).
Properties include a range of colors, sizes, movement types (figure eight, jumping, random, etc), speed and the rare appearance of the partial or full ‘rainbow’ color effect.
There is enough variation here to appeal to anyone who has once possessively held a set of Pokémon cards in their hands, grinning with delight at the adversary sitting across from them. I am personally fond of anything huge — ominous, and enjoys stalking their enemy with an aggressive figure eight stance. Behold Siegodun! In fact, check out all 100 MytoBytes within the Genesis collection at https://mytobytes.com/.
MytoByte Splitting
Now the excitement begins. The owner of that first Genesis MytoByte creature has 3 essential choices to pick from.
- Do I wait for my MytoByte to accumulate enough energy to split? (500 gwei/block at 6400 blocks per day = 15.7 days)
- Do I feed my MytoByte the necessary Eth to catalyze a split?
- A combination of both strategies above.
The reward is the opportunity to split your MytoByte and mint a new one. However, this should be considered carefully because the pricing curve increases exponentially with each successive mint using the following formula.
(# of MytoBytes)² * 5000 Gwei
A back of the napkin calculation will inform us that the 101st Mint is .05 Eth, but the last mint will charge a hefty sum of 5 Eth. Selecting from among the economic strategies above will be an interesting trade-off between time, price, and value.
Future Plans
The founders are both clear with their hope that the community can help nurture and drive the future direction of this project. As the MytoBytes themselves emerged from the blockchain, it is expected that future projects will similarly emerge from the consensus mechanism of PoF (Proof of Fun!).
In a time of approaching NFT saturation, with an exponential increase in daily mints, investors and art fans will begin to focus on quality and innovation to place their bets. MytoBytes checks all the boxes as a standout example of what can happen when passion, intelligence and art collide on the blockchain.
